What metaphors are used in Childhood by Rainer Maria Rilke?

A major key to understanding the intent of the poem lies in the German word bild, which means not only a literal picture, portrait, or visual representation but also an image as metaphor that points beyond itself. Snow says, "bilder in this sense can populate the visual realm with traces, invisible connections, imaginings, remembrances, intimations of things lost or unrealized, waiting to be recalled or brought (back) to life." It is as an image of a lost childhood, dually and simultaneously typical and unique, that this poem appears.